A Sure Sign of Autumn

In Holmes County, Ohio, Amish people know the benefits of purple martins and swallows, and many of the yards here sport white martin houses on tall poles, often two or three at a time, because a colony of purple martins is very effective at keeping the mosquito population in check.  And martins and swallows are the best aerial acrobats, darting and swooping through the air, especially in the evening, to nip bugs in flight.  I could sit for hours watching the martins fly – it’s the best air show in town. 

In special houses built to accommodate them, martins nest in large, domesticated communities.  A smart farmer knows to encourage their numbers, and the design and construction of martin houses is a highly advanced practice among the Amish.  Typically, there will be a tall white pole with a pulley at the top and a crank at the bottom.  The martin house will hang from a wire that loops over the pulley, so that it can be sent up to the top in summer and cranked down to ground level in the fall for cleaning.  Once they have been cleaned out, the houses are cranked up half way for winter, to discourage intruders.  That’s the sure sign of fall in Holmes County – the martin houses have been taken down and cleaned, and they sit about half way up their poles, waiting for the return of the martins in spring.

My wife Madonna and I were down in Holmes County one autumn gone by, in our Miata with the top down, on a country lane east of Calmoutier, and we found this house where the front lawn sported five of these martin-house poles, plus a sixth pole in the back with an assortment of the smaller gourd houses.  You’ll also see on the right that there is a TV antenna where you wouldn’t normally expect to see one.  Curious, isn’t it?

Amish people don’t have televisions, and this antenna is not wired into the house.  So why the antenna?  If you were to visit in the summer, you’d see right away why it’s there.  The martins would show you.  Care to guess?  Right - it’s a perch, and a very good one at that. 

You have to admire this type of thinking.  Why spray with insecticides when you can put up martin houses instead?  And why put up martin houses without easy perches for the birds?  That’s down-home ingenuity if I ever saw it, and it’s one of the reasons we love visiting in Holmes County so much.  That, and to watch the martins fly.